Market Street Tavern moving across the street, new restaurant to replace the tavern

Market Street Tavern to focus more on food

A new restaurant is moving to the current location of Market Street Tavern. Owners aren't ready to discuss the details of the new restaurant yet. Market Street Tavern is moving across Market Street to a new location. (Photo: Staff)

Market Street Tavern is moving across the street where Zarzour’s Eats and Jackie's Treats used to be located.

And the owner of Urban Stack and Taco Mamacita is moving a new restaurant into the space Market Street Tavern is vacating.

“We are opening a new a restaurant there, but not ready to share the concept yet,” Urban Stack and Taco Mamacita owner Mike Monen said via text. “We will be opening early 2013."

Nooga.com couldn’t reach the owners of Zarzour’s to inquire about what happened to that business.

Owner and chef at Market Street Tavern Aaron Long said crews should be starting renovations in the next couple of days, and then he will have a better idea about a timeline for the project.

For Long, the move is a chance to “refine and define” the future of the restaurant.

He declined to discuss the cost of the project.

Market Street Tavern will soon move to this location, where Zarzour's had been. (Photo: Staff)

Long will be leasing the space “for now,” he said.

“We liked the space we are in,” he said. “ We did our best to make it our own, but it’s expensive to build out a new place. Dealing with trials and tribulations of being a downtown restaurant, it’s not always easy to find financing to tear down walls to remodel.”

Long took the opportunity to move across the street to a “blank canvas."

The move will give him a chance to change the focus of the business. Long said he wants to shift from a bar focus to a restaurant focus.

He plans on having “great cocktails” but primarily focusing on local, handmade food projects.

“People don’t know how much we do from scratch,” Long said.

Over the past year or so, Long has built up more of a customer base based on the food products.

Food sales were up for “dramatically” in 2012, he said.

Another draw to the new space for Long is that the former Zarzour’s location has a sprinkler system already installed.

“We are excited to be able to focus on our brand,” Long said. “We can open our doors with what we want the legacy of Market Street Tavern to be.”